Grenfell Tower.

However in a block with hundreds of rooms, crossing fingers and hoping there will never be a fire in any of the kitchens is a poor approach to safety.

Indeed. Just from an engineering persective it's pretty impossible make any one thing 100% perfect under all possible conditions - even 99% is still pretty difficult and expensive. The old "defence in depth" approach (which goes back to medieval castles at least) is a far more practical way of achieving the same (or better) results - you have several layers of defence - each of which may have its weaknesses (let's say for the sake of example that each layer is just 80% effective). Since all layers have to fail for a catastrophy to occur, the chances of overall failure are rapidly reduced by simply adding more layers - 1 layer 80% effective (20% change of failure) - 2 layers 20%*20%=4% chance of failure so 96%  effective, 3 layers 20%*20%*20%=0.8% chance of failure so 99.2% effective and so on. In the Grenfell situation the first layer would be for the applicance not to overheat/catch fire in the first place, the 2nd layer was likely an attempt to contain the overheating within the appliance's casing, the 3rd to confine the fire to the room, the 4th to limit it to the flat, then the next to the floor, and so on. So for things to go horribly wrong multiple layers must have failed (or been by-passed) and so just picking one layer to blame for everything might not be entirely fair.

   - Andy.

Picking one layer to blame for everything might not be entirely fair.

No.  Blaming the freezer manufacturer for everything would be far from fair.

But, equally, entirely absolving them from blame - as the report appears to do - is not fair

Picking one layer to blame for everything might not be entirely fair.

No.  Blaming the freezer manufacturer for everything would be far from fair.

But, equally, entirely absolving them from blame - as the report appears to do - is not fair